


Walking is still honest

by kawuli



Series: We thought we lost you (Welcome back) [6]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Post-Canon, postwar aftermath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-20
Updated: 2017-10-20
Packaged: 2019-01-20 06:47:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12427194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kawuli/pseuds/kawuli
Summary: The fighting is over, but the war is far from finished. The rebuilding is a battle in itself, and reconstructing families and friendships is harder than replacing a bridge. Sara didn't fight in a war to let the peace afterwards fall apart, so she does everything she can to build the family she wants to be part of.





	Walking is still honest

The war’s over, Sara’s in the Capitol, and somehow walking through the half lit streets makes everything seem just that much more real. They're all still reeling in the aftermath, and even if technically it's all over Sara, for one, is still watching her back.

And her crew has a few hours off, so she's out in the early morning cold looking for her girl. Well. Not actually her girl, hasn't been for years if she ever really was, but Rokia's always needed someone to look out for her without ever admitting it, and Sara has been doing that since she walked into Sal's shop and tried not to laugh at the 10-year-old kid telling her how to take apart a brake housing.

The directions she has are spotty at best, Rokia passed them over a sketchy radio connection last week, somehow forgetting that Sara hasn't ever been here before and doesn't know any of the landmarks she mentioned. But eventually she's standing in front of a hangar in an area full of empty buildings, most of which have bullet holes in the walls. Inside, a couple of guys are shrugging off their jackets and flipping on machinery, and when she says good morning they respond, hesitant, in city Six accents. So at least Rokia's got some folks from home around. "I'm looking for Rokia Diarra," she says, and they share a glance and shrug.

"She's probably upstairs."

There's a steep stairway in a back corner and Sara climbs up, trying to be quiet in case Rokia's still asleep. She's not. She's sitting on a mattress on the floor, back to the wall and cocooned in a blanket, datapad on her knees. She's tensed, hands splayed flat on the ground, and although her eyes go from narrowed and intense to wide and surprised when she sees Sara, she doesn't relax. It's not until Sara gets close that she shakes herself free and stands up, blinks and smiles. There's something off about it, but they're all a little off, maybe, and Sara's not going to look too hard when Rokia is here, standing in front of her, and she's always been a survivor and the toughest person Sara's ever known but Sara doesn't take anything for granted, not anymore.

"Hi," she says, awkward because she wants to wrap Rokia in a hug and tangle her fingers in her hair and feel their bodies pressed together and alive, alive, and safe. But she knows better, hates that more than almost anything, so she tucks her own hair back and says, "I was in the neighborhood, thought I'd drop in."

"It's good to see you," Rokia says, shifting, walking past Sara towards the door. "Let me show you around."

Sara bites back a response because Rokia's already past her, walking down the stairs and into the shop. She follows, instead, trying to be patient, to keep up with the whirlwind tour until Rokia finally stops and turns to face her.

"It's a nice place," Sara says, "looks like you've got a good setup."

Rokia smiles a little and looks away. "They're shipping almost everything by hovercraft right now, the rail grid's such a mess, so we get a lot of work."

"Yeah, I know, they say they're going to start sending work crews out any day now to start getting stuff fixed." Sara is planning on going and there's plenty of others who will be happy for the work, but getting materials is painfully slow, the Capitol's stockpiles disappearing far faster than they can be replaced.

Rokia nods, preoccupied, looks around. "I guess that's about it," she says, glancing at Sara reluctantly.

It's dismissive, which is strange, and Sara pauses for a second before asking if Rokia wants to get breakfast. Rokia shrugs. "I got some stuff to do here," she says, and Sara shakes her head.

"Come on," she says, turning toward the door, "you gotta eat. My treat, we can go anywhere you want."

That gets her a scowl, until Rokia shakes her head and smiles, rueful. "Yeah, okay," she says finally, and walks over to get her coat.

 

Sara is used to Rokia's silences, but this one is tense and uncomfortable, stretching between them as Sara follows Rokia at a brisk pace through the narrow streets. There's a cafe on a corner, windows boarded up but lights on, and Rokia pushes inside.

They sit at a table in the corner and Rokia finally holds still enough for Sara to get a good look at her. She looks--small, really, and it's only partly because under the baggy clothes she's pretty clearly too thin. Her shoulders are hunched and she looks like more than anything she wants to hide.

When the food comes, Rokia pushes bites of pancake around her plate, eyes down. Finally Sara breaks the silence. "How long are you staying here?" she asks.

Rokia gives a halfhearted one-shoulder shrug and glances up. "They want the Victors to stay for a bit, there's no real train service, and I got a job here, so I dunno."

It's flat and clipped, and Rokia won't meet her eyes. Sara's pretty sure she knows one part of the problem and she doesn't see much point in avoiding it. "Have you heard anything about the girls?" she asks, and Rokia freezes for a second.

"No," she says, "I've checked the prison records and the execution logs and my Mom and Sal are there but that's it."

"Your grandma?"

"Didn't meet up with that friend of Joe's when she was supposed to, after that nobody knows. Probably got picked up too but there's no record."

Sara forces herself to unclench the fists her hands have formed under the table, swallows the knot of rage in her throat, and attempts to match Rokia's flat tone. "Have you talked to anyone who knows the prisons in Six? Someone must've seen her."

Rokia scowls at her plate and shrugs again. "Who'm I supposed to call? On what phone line? And ask them to what, drop what they're doing and go hunting for an old lady and a couple kids?"

Sara doesn't have an answer to that one, so she tries a different tack. "You don't know where she was sending the girls?"

"We weren't ever sure it was safe to talk about."

Well, fuck. "They have tobe somewhere," Sara says, and Rokia's mouth curls into a bitter half smile.

"They don't, actually," Rokia says, mocking, glancing up, daring Sara to tell her she's wrong.

She's not wrong, is the problem. There's a pretty good chance her grandma got killed in Peacekeeper custody, and after a winter up north with no supplies getting through who knows what the situation is, whether the girls made it to a refugee camp or stayed or starved or froze.

But Rokia is sitting here shrugging off questions instead of heading out to track people down, and that's not the girl she knows. It's disorienting.

And now it's been too long and she hasn't responded so Rokia nods, goes back to her food.

Rokia stands up as soon as they finish, starts heading for the counter. Sara sighs and follows. Rokia's paying, shoots Sara a halfhearted glare when she pulls out her wallet to chip in. They walk back to Rokia's shop in a tense silence Sara doesn't know how to break.

Rokia's clearly eager to get back to work, so Sara says goodbye at the door. "Take care of yourself, Rokia," she says, and gets a wry half smile.

"You too," Rokia replies, already heading in the door.

 

It's a few weeks before Sara makes it back in, and she asks around to see if anyone's heard anything from Six but of course she's not that lucky. It's warming up at least, and even if everything is objectively still a mess, Sara's decided to be hopeful. Blame it on the spring.

Rokia's in the shop, neck deep in some kind of engine tear down, and she just takes a minute to recognize Sara before telling her to come back in a couple hours. Which at least is normal, for Rokia, getting so tied up in a job she can't be bothered to do things like eat or sleep or talk about anything else.

But when Sara does come back, late in the evening, Rokia's still hesitant, evasive, and Sara finally demands she get out of the shop. "Don't you have a place to live?" she asks, teasing, and Rokia winces.

"Guess so," she says, and the guy working with her gives Sara an exasperated look.

"Not so's you'd notice," he says under his breath, but not so quietly that Rokia can't hear and glare at him.

"Fine," she says, annoyed. "Let's go."

They pick up food on the way, because Sara insists, and then make their way to Rokia's apartment. "It was commandeered for me," she says, hesitant, as she unlocks the door. "Don't mind the...well, you'll see."

Sara does. It's probably not extravagant by Capitol standards, but everything is much, much fancier than any house Sara's been in. Rokia looks embarrassed. "The people who lived here left it like this."

Sara doesn't ask what happened to them. What's clear is that the place has barely been touched, and Rokia walks past the fancy couches and into the kitchen, where there's a plain wood table stacked with papers and an array of coffee cups next to the sink.

Sara talks while they eat, since Rokia doesn't. Tells about the repairs to the rail grid, the people forming neighborhood committees in the districts to keep the peace, the signs of hope she's seeing emerge, tentative, as people start to rebuild.

Finally Rokia puts down her fork and looks up. "And in Six?" she asks, caustic.

Six is a mess. Too many actual criminals got let out when Snow opened the prisons as the district fell, too much destruction, too few jobs, and too much bad blood all around. Sara sighs. "Six is tough," she says, careful, and there's that bitter, mocking smile again. It's new, and Sara already fucking hates it.

"Yeah." Rokia says, "so I'm not really seeing how we're better off than we were before."

Sara stares. "What?"

"We got the whole country into this mess, and we got people killed and tortured and everything else, and for what? So a few kids don't have to go in the Games? What the fuck were we thinking?"

"Rokia, the shit he did, it's way more than just that, I mean look what he did to you--"

"I," Rokia says, sharp and precise, "was fine."

Sara just stares at her. What the fuck is she supposed to say to that?

Rokia shakes her head. "I was fine, and I was keeping everyone safe, and somehow I let you people convince me that this would be _better_ , what a fucking joke."

"Rokia," Sara says, and she can't keep the horror out of her voice, "it had to happen, for you and for me and for starving kids in 12 and yeah, so we don't all have to watch kids die on TV every year and it might not be better yet but it's damn well going to be!"

"You don't know that." Rokia says, stubborn. "We'll be lucky if we can keep everyone fed this year. And if I hadn't gotten involved I would still have a family." Her voice trails off as she finishes, and she glances up at Sara for a second with raw pain in her eyes, and then gets up, puts the kettle on the stove. "Anyway, I figure the only way I can make up for it is fixing as much as I broke, and that's gonna take a while." She says it with her back turned, braces herself on the high counter.

"Rokia, what the hell, this is not your fault." Sara is trying to keep up, but she's lost, this is not the girl she knows. Or it is, maybe, but with everything stripped away, leaving nothing but sharp edges that can't help but tear at anyone who comes close.

"It's _our_ fault!" Rokia spins to face her and throws up her hands. "We fucked everything up and we have to fix it or what's the _point_?"

"We did what we had to do," Sara says, and maybe she should just concede the point because Rokia's so--she's not even sure, freaked out or pissed off or both or something else entirely--but she's too stubborn to admit something she truly doesn't believe.

Rokia scowls, shakes her head. "You can tell yourself that," she says, crossing her arms. "I'm done lying."

Shit. "Rokia, come on, sit down, can we just talk?" Maybe there's a way to defuse this even if Sara can't see it right now.

But Rokia shakes her head. "I gotta file some paperwork," she says, nodding at the piles they pushed to the side to eat. "You should probably go."

It's like after Rokia's Victory Tour all over again, she's angry and hurting and closing herself off and just like Sara had to back off then, wait till Rokia was ready for her, she's going to have to back off now. Leave it to Rokia to make winning a war into a mistake, and somehow her--well, their--fault.Logic is clearly not involved in whatever's going on here, so talking isn't going to fix it. She's going to have to figure something else out.

"Fine," she says, and she can't keep all the anger out of her voice even if only a fraction of it is really for Rokia. She hesitates, but she can't leave it like this. "I'm not going to apologize for the rebellion, not to you and not to anyone else either, but for the record I'm trying to fix shit too."

Rokia, who's been staring at her feet this whole time, glances up at that, looking almost embarrassed, and bites her lip. She doesn't say anything though, so Sara sighs and continues. "Just, take care of yourself, okay?"

Rokiasighs. "Yeah, sure," she says, and then it's back to stone faced and tense. "I gotta--" she waves toward the papers again.

"Yeah," Sara says. "Bye Rokia." She's afraid to even touch Rokia, she's wound so tight Sara's afraid she might snap.

"Bye Sara," Rokia echoes, and it's just that, an echo because that's what she's supposed to say, and before Sara's left the room she's sitting at the table looking for a pen.

 

* * *

 

The summer is long and hot and exhausting, everyone's run ragged trying to get enough lines up and running to keep the country fed. Sara talks to Rokia once or twice but it's strictly business, what hovercraft are available when, which lines are priorities. Rokia's not their official contact anymore, but she spent enough time doing it from Thirteen during the war that sometimes it's just easier to keep calling her. She's calm as ever on the radio, but cool, impersonal, distant.

As fall cools toward winter things start to slow down, just enough that Sara starts wondering if she might be able to justify heading back to Six. Her district needs her, her family worries about her, and Matt tries not to give too much away but it's pretty clear he's struggling too. And then there's Rokia's family, and while the refugee camps are getting better organized, there's still no sign of them. Sara isn't a miracle worker, but someone ought to be looking, at least,and she's not sure anyone really is.

She calls Rokia from the phone at a fuel stop outside District Nine, and she should probably know better than to expect anything simple, but she's still surprised at Rokia's response.

"You're going on a wild goose chase," Rokia says, tense and furious. "I can't even tell you where to start."

Sara sighs. "I know that, Rokia. Look, I'm not asking you what I _should_ do, I'm telling you what I'm _going_ to do, okay?"

"I can't come," Rokia says, "they need me here and people keep telling me it's dangerous for Victors and I should go stay with Phillips in the fucking ass end of Panem where it's supposedly safer."

Sara rolls her eyes because there's no one to see. The news programs didn't make a big deal out of the relocation, didn't name names, but everyone knows what happened. And Sara can just about imagine any conversation with Rokia about moving out to 12 where there's no machinery to play with and nobody she knows but Phillips.

"I'm not asking you to come," she continues, "but I'm going."

Rokia goes quiet for a minute, then sighs. "Okay," she says, then, as if it's being dragged out of her, "Thanks."

"That's what friends are for," Sara says, flippant but not really.

Rokia huffs half a laugh across the phone line, but when she speaks her voice is serious. "Be careful, okay?"

"I will." There's been enough tragedy lately. Sara just hopes she's not going to end up finding more.

 

She calls Matt before leaving Nine, manages to snag flour and some of the soy meal they've diverted from feeding animals in Ten to making shoddy meat substitutes until production normalizes. It's technically smuggling, but she technically doesn't care if she can get a little extra protein to Matt's kid while she can.

She checks in at the crew barracks, rebuilt quick and cheap from shipping containers. They're cramped and drafty, but there's still refugees living in half destroyed factories so Sara isn't about to complain. And anyway she's not planning on spending much time there.

In the morning she makes her way to the shop she can't stop thinking of as Sal's, still standing but much the worse for wear. Matt's inside, working with someone to level a lathe, cursing the air blue. Just like old times.

Sara waits till he stands up to walk over, and when he sees her his scowl disappears and he grins. It's a matter of seconds before she's wrapped in a bear hug that just about leaves her breathless. "It's about goddamn time," Matt growls, but he's still smiling, looking her over as she is him, and once they've decided they're both in one piece Matt shakes his head. "Can't believe you, out there fixing every damn thing for six months before you manage to make it home."

"Lot of shit to fix," Sara says, shaking her head, "I just went where they sent me."

"Well, you're here now, come make yourself useful, Mai'll come get us when there's food."

Sara raises an eyebrow. "Got some stuff that might help with that," she says, picking up the bag she dropped when he hugged her. "Should I take it someplace?"

"We're staying up in the old office," Matt says, "you can take it up there."

Sara climbs the stairs, opens the door to what Matt's turned into a cozy apartment. Mai is at the kitchen table bent over a sheaf of papers, and she turns when Sara comes in. Her smile is softer than Matt's, and she gets to her feet. "Welcome home," she says, and it's been more than a year since Sara's been any place that felt like home, and there's a lump in her throat that she swallows with a laugh that's closer to tears than she'd really like. Mai doesn't say anything, just hugs her and offers a chair.

Sara sets the bag on the table and bites her lip when Mai's face lights up at the cheap staples. "Just a little souvenir from District Nine," she says, trying for a joke, and Mai sighs.

"Best kind," she says. "Thanks, Sara."

Sara shrugs. "It's no trouble," she says. "Anyway, your husband wanted me to make myself useful so I'm going to help out for a bit."

Mai laughs. "Leave it to Matt," she says, shaking her head. "You'll stay for lunch?"

"Sure thing," Sara says, and heads down the stairs.

  

They spend the day in the shop and the evening catching up while Sali falls asleep in her mother's lap. It's cozy and comfortable and _home_ and Sara could spend weeks just doing this and be perfectly happy, but she still has a job she needs to do. And Matt hasn't heard anything about Rokia's family, not since the Reaping. Mai hasn't either, and she offers to check the lists at the school but Sara is pretty sure even if the girls are registered it won't be under their real names. So the next day she starts looking, beginning with the prison records and the hospitals.

Sara comes back to the shop every few days to put in some honest work so she doesn't go crazy tracing down loose ends and dead leads, but after a couple weeks she's pretty sure there's nothing for her in town. So she begs her way onto an intra-district train crew and starts heading north.

 

* * *

 

 

It's just after the New Year, in a town halfway up the district, when she finds the hospital. "I'm looking for someone," she says, and the overworked nurse at the intake counter sighs.

"Everyone's looking," the woman says, tired. "Who you tryin' to find?"

"An older woman, mid-sixties, named Kadidia Diarra, and her grandkids. Alima would be 11 and Kadi 9."

The woman's eyes narrow. "Who'd you say you were?" She sounds alert now, faintly suspicious.

"I'm Sara," she answers, heart racing, "I'm...a friend of Kadidia’s other granddaughter, Rokia."

"Wait here."

The woman disappears. Sara waits, looking around the room at the people waiting, all bundled haphazardly against the cold. It's a long time before the nurse comes back. "Come on then," she says, and motions Sara through the doors.

Sara's only met Rokia's grandmother once, an afternoon at Sal's house the year after Rokia won her Games, and she'd been strong and straight backed and proud, braiding Kadi's hair with rough, calloused hands. When she walks into the hospital kitchen she barely recognizes the woman standing in the doorway. This woman looks old, her hair grey, cropped short, and her hands shake, just slightly. It's the eyes that give her up, Rokia's eyes, her mom's eyes and Allie's eyes, wide and dark. Sara reaches out a hand and Kadidia takes it in both of hers. "Sara," she says, soft. "Am I glad to see you."

They sit at a table in the corner of the kitchen, and once Sara assures her that Rokia is okay, for certain values of the word, Kadidia tells her what she knows. Unfortunately it isn't much. She'd kept the girls at her house until the signal came through, put them on a northbound train that night before the Arena blew out. "They were going to meet some old friends, not rebels mind you, just suspicious loner types the way you get up there. Told 'em the girls' folks got caught up in some bad business and they needed to get out. Ismael and Rita aren't the type to ask a lot of questions, and I sent the girls with enough money to keep it that way."

It was a good plan, Sara thinks, for keeping the girls hidden. Just not so good for tracing them after. But at least by the end she has more names to look for, Ismael and Rita Sidibe, and their "nieces."

Kadidia isn't interested in leaving, either to go south to her daughter-in-law or north to her husband. From what Sara's heard of Magda it's probably a good idea, and she doesn't know anything about Rokia's grandfather but Snow's guys let him go only a couple days after picking him up, and that's not exactly a ringing endorsement.

So Sara leaves, with a promise to bring back any news, and heads to the town center to find a phone.

Rokia answers, breathless, just before Sara gives up.

"Rokia, I found your grandma," Sara says, and hopes the knot in her throat isn't obvious over the phone.

Rokia's breath hisses out and she's silent. "Is she okay?" she asks finally, in a small voice, sounding so young all of a sudden that Sara wants to cry.

"She's going to be," Sara hedges, "she got hurt in prison but she's working now, in a hospital up here."

Rokia just says "Oh," in a soft, small voice.

"She says to say she loves you and take care of yourself," Sara says, and suddenly Rokia's crying, sobbing into the phone and Sara swallows her own tears and tries to be soothing.

Suddenly there's another voice, muffled, and the phone hisses before someone else picks it up and says "Hello, who is this?" The voice is brusque, a note of anger underneath, the kind of voice that means you'd better pay attention.

"I'm Sara, I'm a friend of Rokia's," Sara blurts out. "I just called to tell her I found her grandma out here in Six, she was missing."

"Okay, look," and now it's exasperation underlining the words, "that's great, but if there's any more bombshells to drop you need to call me first."

Now it's Sara's turn to be angry. "And who are you?"

"I'm Lyme, Rokia's staying with me."

Well that's an interesting one. Why is a District Two Victor taking care of the person least likely to let anyone do so in the history of stubborn Sixes?

"She's staying with you _where_?" is the question that actually comes out, because it seemed like Rokia couldn't be pried out of her shop in the Capitol with a crowbar.

"In Two. I need to go, Sara, write down my number." Sara fishes out a pen and scrawls it on her arm, dumbfounded enough to just agree and hang up.

She stares at the phone for a full minute before picking it up again to call Matt at the shop.

 

There's no trains running up to the peninsula, the bridge across the lake is still a twisted pile of metal half out of the water. By the time Sara's long-suffering crew boss finally gives her a week's leave and a pass to head north her frustration is starting to mount. Her mother's disapproving comments are growing sharper-edged and even Matt shakes his head at her persistence, asks if she's even heard from Rokia, and no, she hasn't, and as much as she tries not to let it grate, it does.

But every time she thinks about giving up she sees Allie standing with Magda at the Reaping, stubbornly refusing to cry when Rokia got on the train and holding Kadi's hand tight. Thinks of Rokia, huddled in a corner of a roof on a dilapidated building, letting herself fall apart the only place she could so that she could go back in the morning and make her sisters' breakfasts.

She's sick and tired of searching, but as long as there are traces she has to follow.

She's seen a lot of destruction, but she's not really prepared for the north country. It's not destroyed, not much, but over a year cut off from the rest of the country means eerie silence, houses abandoned when people fled south to find food or a warm place to sleep. The supply hovercraft she's on goes once a month, taking supplies up to the die-hard few who've stayed huddled in near-deserted settlements carved out of the forest, huddling around the open scars of pit mines that dot the landscape.

It's at the end of the run that she finds Ismael, glaring at her with his arms crossed over his chest, a pickaxe resting at his feet where he's been using it to hack a clear space in the soil.

"I'm here about the two little girls," Sara says, skipping the formalities. Not likely they'd be appreciated anyway.

"Sent them south, with my wife," he says. "Last fall."

Sara swallows frustration, just another step in the never-ending hunt.

"You stayed?" she asks, curious and a little impressed.

The man's mouth curls up in a mean smile. "This place is mine," he says, eyes narrowing. "Nobody's gonna take it while I'm still breathing."

Sara takes in the run-down house, the firewood stacked against the wall, the overgrown spaces that once were gardens, all dwarfed by the trees. Even Snow didn't care much what happened all the way up here, so long as the quotas came in. Maybe it's a kind of freedom.

"You know where they went?" Sara asks, and she's disappointed but not surprised when he shakes his head.

"Rita's got family down there," he says, "But I haven't heard a thing. She'll come back in the spring with those kids though." He looks Sara up and down. "Who're you to 'em, anyway?"

"A friend," she says, and he purses his lips. "Kadidia told me she sent the girls to you."

The name placates him a little. "You got no call to give them trouble," he says, "Them girls got enough."

Sara smiles, rueful. "Believe me," she says, "I know."

She gets a vague list of family--a salvage worker in Huron, a smelter in Warren, a cousin doing something in Three Rivers, and it's more than she's had to go on in months of searching but just in case, she tells him to send word with the supply runs if the girls turn up.

And by then she's late, and the pilot glares at her as she hurries onto the craft so they can head back south.

  

The population databases are closed to Sara--maybe Rokia could figure out how to get into them but she's hesitant to ask. And her crew boss is sympathetic, but she's got a job to do and she can't just go haring off-course every week to spend days asking suspicious locals about the people she's trying to find.

Or at least that's her excuse when as the muggy summer heat descends she still hasn't tracked down everyone on the list.

She's sitting outside the shop with Matt on her evening off, waiting in the vain hope that it'll cool off enough to make sleeping in their beds a little more comfortable, when the phone rings. Matt sighs, looks up at the sky, and heaves himself to his feet. "Oh good," he says, tired, "another emergency."

Sara laughs and leans back to wait. Matt comes out after only a minute, and when Sara glances over she's alert instantly. He's shaking his head, face a picture of total shock. "What?" she asks, and he opens his mouth, closes it, takes a breath.

"The girls," he says, and Sara's heart stops. "Guy from the supply runs says somebody named Ismael told him to tell you the little girls are back with him."

It takes a second to sink in, and Sara just stares while Matt's face breaks into a grin. And then she laughs, wild, because it's that or cry, gets up and throws her arms around Matt's neck. He hugs her back, chuckling, and then she's laughing and crying all at once, and he holds her close until she takes a deep shaky breath and pulls away.

"I have to go up there," she says, "I have to bring them back."

Matt nods, watching her, and when he speaks again his voice is hesitant. "Sure you do," he says, "But Sara, where are they going to go?"

"With Rokia," Sara says, automatic, "They're family, she needs them and they need her."

Matt nods. "She's still staying with that lady in Two though, right?"

Sara shrugs. "So?"

He sighs. "Look, I know you guys are…" he waves a hand vaguely, "but you know she's not…"

Sara glares. "Not _what_ , Matt? She needs her sisters, you know that."

"She's not right, Sara," and his voice is gentle, and he moves to sit down but Sara walks away, spins to face him.

"She's _fine_ ," she snaps, and it's a lie and they both know it but Sara refuses to admit that Rokia is what, too messed up to take care of her family? When she's been doing it since she was a littler kid than Allie is now?

Matt doesn't bother countering that, just continues. "Plus you'd be sending two little girls all the way across the country to live with a bunch of scary-as-shit Two Victors, you really think that's a good idea?"

"So Rokia can come here," Sara says, and as she says it she realizes it can't happen. Six is dangerous and angry and Rokia wouldn't be able to hide forever, would catch the attention of the Snow apologists or the street gangs or the hardcore rebels who want everyone associated with the old world up against a wall and shot.

Matt sits then, heavy. "Yeah, but she can't," he says, tired, and Sara doesn't contradict him this time.

"Shit," she says, pacing. "I gotta go see them, at least," she says, finally. "I'm not telling Rokia till I see them with my own two eyes."

"Yeah," Matt says, glancing over at her. "And look, if you want to bring them back here they can stay with me and Mai for a bit."

Sara looks back, startled. "Mai's ok with it?"

"Sure she is," Matt says, smiling a little. "It was her idea."

And here Sara thought she was the one figuring it all out, when it turns out her friends are, as usual, a half-step ahead. She sighs. "Thanks."

 

She argues herself hoarse the next morning at the hovercraft depot, but the supply run isn't scheduled for another three weeks and they aren't going to change it for a couple of kids. When Sara goes back to the shop, furious and defeated, it's Matt who suggests calling Lyme. "She did _tell_ you to call her if there was news, didn't she?"

Sara hesitates, but she's desperate. She can't wait another three weeks to know for sure. So she finds the phone number, sits down at the desk in the shop, and dials.

"Hello?" It's the same brusque voice on the phone, the one that says you'd better be worth her time.

"This is Sara, Rokia's friend?" Sara's certainty's a little shaken by the magnitude of the favor she's about to ask.

"Yes, I remember," Lyme says. "What's going on?"

Sara takes a deep breath. "I think I've found Rokia's sisters, they're up in one of the northern mining towns, but I can't get a hovercraft to go see them for another three weeks." She leaves off the question.

"Well that sounds like bullshit," Lyme says, easy, "I'll see what I can do."

Sara pauses. "And, well, we're not sure where they should go after," she says finally, because who else could she ask? "They should be with Rokia but, well…" she trails off, not sure what to say next.

There's a silence on the other end of the line that's anything but comfortable. "Yeah." Lyme says finally. "I'll see what we can do about that, too."

"Thanks," Sara says. "We got a place for them here for a while but they need something permanent."

"Yeah," Lyme says again. "I'll let you know."

The line goes dead.

 

Two hours later there's a call from the depot telling her to get her ass down there in the next half hour. She grabs her things and gets there to find an annoyed pilot waiting on the tarmac. He just shakes his head and walks over to a transport craft that's waiting for them. "I don't know who you called," he says, "but I got orders all the way from the head of whatever they're calling the Peacekeepers these days that say I'm supposed to take you where you want to go, top priority."

Sara raises an eyebrow. "Guess I got friends in high places," she says, and he snorts.

It's a long quiet flight, until they land finally in the empty town square. Sara walks over to the house she remembers, hidden now in the leafed-out trees.

When she reaches it she stops, frozen, because the girls are sitting pressed together on the porch steps. Allie has a shirt and a needle and thread in her hands, tongue between her teeth in concentration as she mends a tear. Kadi's got something in her lap too, but she's mostly just watching Allie and looking out over the grass. Finally she glances in Sara's direction and her eyes get wide. She nudges Allie, who looks up in irritation, her concentration interrupted, and then stares at Sara like she's seeing a ghost. Sara collects herself and walks over. "Hi," she says, wishing she'd thought more about what happened next rather than focusing all her energy on just _getting_ to this point. "I'm Sara, you remember me?"

"Yeah," Allie says, wary. "You're Rokia's friend. What're you doing here?"

Sara swallows, looks around. "Well," she says, "I came to find you, take you home."

Kadi smiles. "Can we see Rokia?" she asks, excited.

"Soon," Sara says, hoping it's true. It has to be.

Allie's still watching with narrowed eyes. "Where is she?" she asks.

"She's in District Two, because of the Victor Relocation." Sara's not sure what news makes it all the way up here but Allie nods.

"Is she coming back?"

"I don't know."

The door to the house opens and a woman comes out. "Who are you?" she asks, and Sara sighs.

"I'm Sara, I'm a friend of their sister's. Your husband sent word the girls were back."

The woman nods. "I'm going to get him," she says, "You stay put."

Sara sits on the steps next to Kadi. "What're you working on?" she asks, trying to defuse things a little. Kadi picks up the needle from the pile of cloth.

"We're fixing stuff," she says. "But I'm not very good at it."

Sara smiles. "I never was either," she says.

Allie's quiet, watching, her hands fisted in her lap. "Where are you taking us really?" she asks.

"You can stay with Matt and Mai until Rokia can take you," Sara says, and Allie nods, considering.

"I bet Sali can walk and talk and everything now," she mumbles, looking down at her feet.

"Yeah," Sara says, "She's almost three already."

Allie nods again. "What about Aunt Magda and Uncle Sal?"

Sara winces. "Your Uncle Sal died in the war," she says, leaving out the details. "Magda went to stay with her brother."

Allie just nods. Kadi looks confused, shifts closer to her sister. "Our mom got killed," Allie says, slow.

"Yeah."

"The Peacekeepers shot her on TV."

"Yeah."

"And Rokia ran away."

"She had to," Sara says, "They would have killed her too."

No response.

"She's okay?" Kadi asks, tears in her eyes. "Rokia's okay?"

"Yeah, Kadi, she's okay," Sara says, and damn but she hopes it's true.

Ismael and Rita come back then, and he leans an ax against the porch. It doesn't look like a threat, but it's not the friendliest gesture, either.

"Rita says you're takin' them home," Ismael says.

Sara nods. "Their sister'll get them, till then they'll stay with friends."

"Their sister's that Victor girl, isn't she." It's Rita who says it, a statement more than a question.

"Yeah. Rokia."

"Thought so. Kadidia had some story but we figured--well, we might not watch much TV up here but we're not dumb."

Sara nods. They trade a glance. "Well, we can't very well stop you," Ismael continues. "They ain't ours to keep."

"We'll take good care of them," Sara says, not sure what else to say. "And…thank you. For keeping them safe."

Ismael nods. "Girls, go get your things," Rita says, and she follows them into the house.

 

They come out with half-full duffels, the worn train crew-issue gear that half of Six uses, and say goodbye with stiff hugs and tears from Kadi. They hold hands as they follow Sara through deserted streets to where the pilot is waiting, impatient.

The girls cling to each other, looking wide-eyed at the hovercraft waiting for them. Allie bites her lip and shepherds Kadi onto the craft and into a seat. Sara makes sure they're buckled in and they lift off, the girls' hands gripped tight together the whole flight.

  

There must be something about being a mother, because even though Mai doesn't know the girls much better than Sara does, they relax a bit when they walk into the small apartment and Mai takes over. Sara disappears gratefully while Mai hustles the girls towards baths and beds, finds Matt sitting outside again.

She sits down next to him and blows out a breath. He chuckles. "That good?" he asks, and Sara laughs herself.

"They didn't know about Sal," she says, and he winces.

"Guess there's no reason they would," he says, and Sara shakes her head.

"They got nobody anymore but Rokia," she says. "They hardly know us, they hardly know their grandma, there's nobody else."

Matt sighs. "Yeah. Did that Lyme lady have any ideas?"

Sara shrugs. "Said she'd work on it."

"You called her yet?"

Sara shakes her head, exhaustion creeping in. It's been a long day. But she squeezes her eyes shut and then gets up and heads for the phone.

Lyme picks up quick this time.

"They're here," Sara says, getting it out of the way first. "Kadi and Allie, they're both here, they're fine."

"Good," Lyme says, after the briefest of pauses. "That's good to hear."

"I don't know who you called, but they sure were effective," Sara says, "So thanks for that."

"Not a problem," Lyme says. "I'll tell Rokia."

"Tell her--well, just tell her I said hi," Sara replies, not knowing what else to say. "I miss you" isn't right, "I love you" is too much, "I hope you're okay" sounds stupid.

She figures she can almost hear Lyme smile over the phone. "I'll tell her," she says. "And Sara, thank you."

Sara gets the feeling that's not something Lyme says very often. "Glad to help," she says finally, and they hang up.

She tries not to be disappointed when she goes home to bed and Rokia hasn't called.

 

The next morning she wakes up to a knock on her door. "Phone call for you," someone calls, and she hauls herself out of bed. The sun's streaming in, she must have overslept. Rubbing her eyes, she goes to the common room and picks up the phone.

"Sara?" It's Rokia's voice, soft and hesitant.

"Yeah, Rokia, it's me," Sara says, feeling her own voice shift, turn gentle.

"They're really there? They're okay?"

"Yeah, Rokia, they are." Sara takes a breath. "They're with Matt, you can call, talk to them yourself."

Rokia laughs a little, startled. "Maybe I'll do that," she says.

It's rare for Rokia to be this shaken, Sara's so used to her being tough and unfazed, that to hear her so completely off-balance is unfamiliar, uncomfortable.

"You should," Sara says. "They miss you."

"I miss them," Rokia says, immediate and instinctive. "Thank you, Sara," and Rokia doesn't say that often, either.

"I'm glad I could do it," Sara says, and it's true even if mostly she wishes she'd never had to.

They're neither of them sure what to say after that, so they say their goodbyes and hang up.

 

* * *

 

 

Without the never-ending search to make it worth it, Sara's really sick of the smoky, rattletrap intra-district trains, and her boss is only a little sad to see her go. Matt laughs at her and tells her that of course she's welcome to work at the shop for just as long as it takes her to get stir-crazy. He's probably right--she hasn't stayed in one place for going on 7 years now and she's not sure she ever will, but for now she wants to keep both eyes on the girls, half-worried they'll disappear if she leaves. She convinces the barracks manager she's just taking a leave of absence so she can keep her bunk: Matt and Mai now have 5 people living in space that was cramped for three, so she's not about to crash on his couch.

The girls hang around the shop during the day, while Mai goes to school and Sali stays with Mai's folks. They're quiet, stick close to each other, and Matt gives them small jobs, disassembling a brake cylinder, cleaning gunked up parts, sorting loose hardware. As soon as Mai comes home they follow her upstairs, Kadi often clinging to her skirt.

One afternoon after they've left Matt shakes his head and turns to Sara. "They need family," he says. "Alima's trying to be Rokia for Kadi and it's not going to work out for either of them."

Sara sighs. "Yeah," she says, "But what are we supposed to do?"

Matt shrugs. "Wait, I guess," he says, "They're good kids and we're happy to have them but it's not what they need."

 

So it's a relief to get a phone call from Lyme a few days later.

"Hi Sara," Lyme says, when Matt passes her the phone.

"Hi, what's up?"

"We think we have a good place for the girls here, if they still want to come."

Sara breathes deep. "Yeah, that would be good, what's the plan?"

Lyme pauses for a second. "Brutus's parents would take them, it's a little ways from the Village by train but easy for Rokia to visit."

Sara hesitates. "They're used to living with Rokia," she says, almost a question.

Lyme sighs. "Yeah, I don't think that's the best option for anyone right now."

Chalk up another point to Matt then. "Rokia's okay with it?" Sara asks.

"Yes, she agreed."

"Can I talk to her?" It comes out practically pleading, and that wasn't the plan but Sara wants to hear Rokia's voice.

There's a long pause. "Yeah, okay," Lyme says, "Hold on."

Sara waits. Finally, Rokia comes on. "Hello?"

"Hi Rokia," Sara says, and her heart's beating fast for no good reason.

"Lyme told you about Heidi and Marc?"

"Yeah," Sara says, "Brutus's parents?"

Rokia lets out a whisper of a laugh. "Yeah, how strange is that?"

Sara smiles. "It's pretty weird. But I'm getting used to weird."

"Yeah," Rokia says, quiet. "I think it'll be good though." She sounds hopeful, and that's all Sara needed to hear.

"We'll put the girls on a train," Sara says, "I'll see if Joe's going that way, he'll take good care of them."

"That'd be good," Rokia says.

Sara wants to go, wants to see her, but something tells her it's not a good idea. Not time yet, wait for the girls to settle, and then maybe.

They say goodbye, and she turns to see Matt watching her from across the room. He shakes his head as she comes over. "Damn, girl," he says, a smile playing around the corners of his mouth, "You got it _bad_."

"Oh, shut up and give me the allen keys," Sara says, and gets back to work.

  

Joe's crew is headed to the Capitol via Two the next week, and he comes himself to pick up the girls Saturday morning. Mai's braided their hair and bought them new clothes, so Allie's ankles aren't peeking out under her jeans. Kadi cries a little when she hugs Mai goodbye, but takes her sister's hand and follows her out to Matt's truck. Sara watches as they drive away, wondering and hoping and wishing and when Mai puts a hand on her shoulder she sighs.

"You did good," Mai says, and Sara turns. Mai's watching her, smiling a little. Sara nods, absently."Give her time," Mai continues. Sara's never been close with her the way she is with Matt, Mai's gentle where both of them are rougher around the edges, but maybe right now she could use a little gentleness.

"Come on," Mai says, "It's my day off, have a cup of tea."

It feels odd to be still, sitting in the cozy kitchen sipping mint tea and watching Sali pile blocks one on another until they fall over, then grinning up at them, pleased with the noise. Matt's probably right about Sara getting stir-crazy, the sound of train whistles in the distance calling. Settled, domestic, it's nice but it's not really for her, she's known that since she was old enough to know the tracks continued outside the city and to dream of finding a way out.

Matt comes back, not long after, kisses Mai and sits down with a sigh. "I sure hope it's the right thing to do," he says, shaking his head. "Awful lot of changes for those kids."

Mai covers his hand with hers. "They need their sister, and she needs them. Guess we just have to trust they'll work it out." Matt looks over at her, nods.

 

It's a couple weeks before they hear anything, beyond Joe's assurance the girls arrived just fine. There's no emergency and Sara doesn't want to bother Lyme just for curiosity's sake. But finally Matt has a reason to call Rokia for work--plans for hovercraft parts he can't get anywhere else. He can't get through, and Rokia keeps her phone on always, so they've started worrying by the time she calls back, late Monday night. They're sitting upstairs, relaxing after Sali's in bed, when the phone rings and Matt scrambles to answer.

"Oh shit, Rokia, I was starting to get worried," he says, and Sara sits up, alert. "I didn't know where you were and you weren't answering so…" a pause, while Rokia answers, and he relaxes a little. “Oh,” he says, pauses. “I guess—that makes sense, but damn, girl, you had me worried." He looks over at Sara, nods, mouths "she's fine," then continues. “How’re your girls?” It's funny almost, Sara and Mai waiting, tense, while Matt talks. Finally he finishes, "You take care, okay?" and Sara sits back, pretending like maybe she isn't hanging on every word, when Matt comes back to the table.

"She's fine, everyone's fine," he says, right off the bat. "I guess down where the girls are her phone doesn't work." Sara shakes her head, trying to let go of the nagging fear that's built up since Matt first tried calling. "Allie's pissed at her for leaving, I guess, and Kadi's still clingy, but it sounds like they're settling in okay, she says it's a good spot for them."

"How'd she sound?" Sara asks, and Matt eyes are amused but it doesn't quite reach his mouth.

"Her usual, fine, a little preoccupied, like she's got twelve things on her mind at once." Now Sara smiles. That's her girl, and maybe it's weird to like that her brain spins at 200 miles an hour even when it doesn't need to, but Sara can't help it.

Matt's smiling back, but before he can make a smart-ass comment Mai says "Well, that's good to hear," and shoots him a glance Sara can't quite read. Sara sighs, gets up. "I'm heading back," she says, and Matt gets up. "No, it's okay, I'll take the bus," she says, and they trade another complicated look before Matt sits back down.

"OK, be careful, Sara," he says, and she waves as she walks out.

 

She's not brooding, really she isn't, it's just, well, lonely, walking back into her compartment in the barracks and sliding into bed alone. There's light and noise coming from the common room and she could go see if anyone she knows is around but she doesn't want that either. She wants something she's not sure she'll ever be able to have, what Matt and Mai have, a closeness that's less about sex than it is about _knowing_ each other, comfortable and well-worn and tough as nails under everything. Maybe it is just her going stir-crazy, staying too long in one place, missing her old crew, boredom turning into ridiculous melancholy. Not much reason to stay here now anyway. Tomorrow she'll see if she can get back on the long hauls.

 

* * *

 

 

It's all a little confused, a mix of the old system limping along and shifts that happened along the way, but it means when she calls up her old crew boss the next morning he's still running short handed and is more than glad to take her back. The major inter-district track repairs are done, but so much else is changed that they're reorganizing routes and crews and cars as they go along, trying to shift a system planned for Capitol control and Capitol consumption into something that works better. Talking about basing crews out of different districts, of running rail yards in 9 and 7, laying new track and clearing new space and all the possibilities they'd never even imagined before.

And it is better, having a crew around her, settling into the roll of the cars on the track and the rhythm of constant motion. Better now than before the war because even if they're busy they can steal an hour while the cargo's offloaded to head out into the town. They overnight in Eight and Mady and Rick take her out to a bar they've found, and they trade stories with guys coming off shifts in the textile mills. Sara watches Mady flirting with a girl in a riotous patchwork dress, lets herself get pulled up to dance with a guy with brilliant blue eyes and a crooked smile, and they walk back to the train late, breathing smoggy air that could just as well be Six but it's not, it's a whole new Panem and they're out here building it.

She still makes it back to Six one week a month, stops in to lend a hand at the shop. Mai's pregnant again, she tells Sara with a brilliant smile, and Sara grins back and hugs her and it's amazing to think that this child will never see a Reaping. They toast to new beginnings with apple cider from the half-wild trees they've found outside the city, where a few families from 11 have come up with saplings to plant and set up housekeeping.

Matt talks to Rokia once in a while, and Sara can't help grasping for anything he can tell her, even if she sometimes wants to smack him across that knowing smirk he gives her. "She sounds okay, Sara, the girls are settling in, she built Kadi a soapbox car, Allie put herself in charge of their garden."

Sara sighs. It's good, all of it, but it's not enough. "You could call her," Matt says, "it's not like she doesn't have a telephone."

"I know, it's just... I don't want it to be weird. Last time I called her I made her cry and Lyme told me to call her instead of Rokia."

Matt shakes his head, confused, but Mai looks sympathetic. "Lyme was probably just worried about her, Sara, it's nothing against you."

"Yeah, but it's still...I don't want to upset her and I don't have Matt's convenient work excuses."

Mai looks at her husband. "Okay, I know we're not thirteen anymore, but Matt, maybe you should talk to Rokia."

Matt raises an eyebrow. "Really?"

"Yeah. It's better if Rokia calls Sara." Mai watches him, steady, not backing down.

"I have a phone now," Sara says. "Works almost everywhere." Now she gets the raised eyebrows. "What? Bought it off some guy in the Capitol who wanted the cash."

Then of course she has to take it out and show them, and she calls their phone and has an utterly pointless conversation across the room with Matt, and takes a picture with the camera to show them on the screen. Matt's eyes light up. "You think you can get me one?" he asks, "I want to take pictures of Sali."

Sara grins. "Sure thing," she says, and the conversation is successfully shifted to new toys and Capitol magic, and no more mention of phone calls to District Two.

 

Sara doesn't expect Rokia to call, not really, but as the silence drags longer she wonders what happened to ruin the friendship they'd managed to cling to despite everything, what's made it so Rokia won't even talk to her. Even after she won, after the mess of the Victory Tour, after Rokia demanded secrecy for reasons Sara didn't understand until the horrible days after the Arena fell--even then they talked sometimes, shared whispers and secrets and stolen moments. Now there's nothing, and Rokia is holed up in a foreign district and her sisters are living with someone else and Sara is back on the railroads but everything's changed.

And then, as fall edges toward winter, again, her phone buzzes in her pocket and startles her half to death. A number flashes onto the screen, unknown, and Sara takes a breath and answers.

"Sara?"

"Hi Rokia," Sara replies, trying to keep her voice neutral as her heartbeat races.

"How's things?" Rokia asks, awkward, and Sara can't help but laugh.

"Things are good," she says, smiling. "Can't complain."

Now Rokia laughs, just a whisper over the line. "Well, good," she says, "that's good."

"How are _you_?" Sara asks, because what in the twelve districts is happening right now?

"I'm okay," Rokia says. "The girls are settling in, I got a great shop out here."

Sara rolls her eyes, because it's so incredibly typical. Her girls and her job. "That's good," she says, cautious.

"Look, um." Rokia hesitates. "I don't know if you come through Two very much but," a long pause. "It would be good to see you."

Sara is really glad nobody's in the crew bunks right now because she's pretty sure she's grinning like an idiot. "I can make it work," she says, because she will, if she has to rearrange her entire schedule for the month she's going to get a free day in District Two.

"Okay," Rokia says. "That's good, Sara, that's great."

"I'll have to check the schedule and let you know," Sara says. "Can I call this number?"

"Yeah," Rokia says, "this is me."

"Good," Sara says. "I'll let you know."

 

Sara pretty much would have to mess up the entire month's schedule to put herself in Two for a day. Despite the fact that everyone's angling for days off in new districts, Two is not a common destination. Too bad it isn't Four, then she'd have a chance at convincing the crew to schedule a day. But in the end, she can stop off there on the way back to Six for home leave, take the night train, and her crew boss looks at her a little funny when she puts in the request, but he signs off, so she'll take it.

She tells Rokia about it, trying to keep her excitement at some kind of reasonable level, and Rokia sounds nervous but maybe excited, too, so she'll hope. With two weeks to wait, she gets a truly unreasonable about of teasing from Mady and Rick about dreamy looks and who she's seeing in district Two of all places that makes her that crazy. Finally, _finally_ , they head out of the Capitol one morning and Sara takes her bag and gets off at the platform in District Two.

They're up in the mountains here, and the wind hits Sara's face and makes her wince, and at first she doesn't recognize Rokia, standing on the edge of the cargo platform wrapped in a puffy coat with a hat pulled low. It's the eyes she recognizes first, and the hesitant, shy smile, and Sara can't help but grin as she walks over and Rokia steps forward to meet her.

"Hi, Rokia," Sara says, staying a couple steps back and struggling to keep her hands loose at her sides.

Rokia's smile broadens a little. "Hi," she says, quiet, hands in her pockets. "Come on, let's get out of the cold." Sara follows her down to where a car is parked, smiles as Rokia slides behind the wheel.

"Nice ride," she says, because it is.

"It's Lyme's," Rokia says, "but I've been fixing it up."

Driving gives Rokia a good excuse not to meet Sara's eyes, and Sara tries not to stare.

"I bet you have," Sara says. "Are you physically capable of driving anything without finding something to fix on it?"

Rokia glances over, half-startled, but then she laughs. "I guess not," she says, and some of the tension fades.

 

They pull up first next to a hangar, doors closed against the cold. Rokia hesitates. "I was going to show you the shop," she says, looking at her hands, still on the steering wheel, "if you want?" And there she glances over.

"Of course," Sara says, and means it. Rokia nods, turns off the car, and they get out. "Fuck, Rokia, it's cold here!"

Rokia laughs. "Nobody believes me when I tell them this," she says. "They all think it's totally normal."

It's not that much colder than Six, maybe, but the wind whistles down from the mountains and stabs through all Sara's layers. It's cold enough.

The shop is warmer, if still drafty, and Rokia unzips her coat while she looks around, pleased. There's a couple guys at a corner workbench, and they wave but keep working. Other than that the shop is quiet, a hovercraft looming in the center of the room, machinery ranged around the perimeter.

"They brought a lot of stuff from the place I was working, in the Capitol," Rokia says. The machinery is clean, well maintained, and as they make the tour Rokia touches things here and there, the way Sara's seen women in the Capitol pet their dogs, glancing fond brushes, just to make sure they're there. She bites her lip and doesn't mention it, nods at the right times, comments on the things she recognizes. It's like the first time they met in the Capitol but at the same time completely different--Rokia is still tense, the way she always is, like a coiled spring, but she's herself, somehow, in a way she wasn't before.

They end up back at the door, finally, and Rokia looks up, eyebrows raised. "What do you think?" She asks, looks away.

Sara bites back her first response, which is to say that Salif would be proud. But it's no good to hesitate so she goes with "Wait till Matt hears, he might move to Two." That gets her a smile, and she gives herself a point.

"Come on," Rokia says, "Lyme's waiting."

Sara shakes her head. "I can't believe you live with _Lyme_ ," she says, because _seriously_?

Rokia shrugs. "She's just... It's not..."

Damn. "No, hey, it's fine," Sara says, and Rokia relaxes a little. "The whole world's weird, don't even worry about it.”

 

They drive up to the Two Victors Village and Sara can't help but gawk at the wall, the gate, the guards who nod at Rokia and wave them in. She keeps her mouth shut though, and Rokia just focuses on driving, and Sara tells herself not to stare as they make their way along wooded streets to a house that's as big as Rokia's was, back in the Six Village, but sturdier, somehow, settled in the way that the Capitol-built stuff in Six never managed to be.

Sara leaves her bag in the car, she's heading out tonight and there's probably no safer place in the entirety of Panem, because who the fuck would try to steal from these guys? She takes a deep breath and follows Rokia up to the door. Sara's momentarily surprised when Rokia walks right in, like it's home, before she remembers that for Rokia it is. So she follows her in.

Lyme is coming out of the kitchen, and Sara smiles and steps forward, just a little. "You must be Lyme," she says, not waiting for Rokia to make introductions. "I'm Sara. It's good to meet you."

Lyme smiles, a little bit amused, friendly enough, and takes Sara's hand in hers. "Good to meet you too," she says, glancing over at Rokia. "Come on in, I'm just making lunch."

Sara takes off her coat and her grimy boots, but keeps her sweater. Rokia has a sweatshirt on that absolutely must have belonged to someone else because it hangs almost to her knees. Sara's betting it's Lyme's, and the sleeves dangle below Rokia's fingertips, but she just fists her hands inside them and walks toward the kitchen. "C'mon" she says, "let's see if we can help."

They set the table, Lyme brings out pasta and salad and good fresh bread and Sara's mouth waters. "This looks way better than canteen food," Sara says, "or crew rations."

Rokia asks about crew rations and the kitchens aboard a cargo train, and Sara happily tells her about that and answers the twenty questions that follow. Lyme's watching them, not being obvious about it but it's there. Sara, for her part, watches Rokia, whose face lights up when she starts into some story about the latest problem at the shop, the soapbox car Kadi raced last summer, Allie's garden miracles.When they finish, Lyme clears the plates and Rokia fidgets, suddenly awkward without a distraction.

Sara digs in her pocket and finds a pack of cards. "You know how to play Ratscrew?" she asks. Rokia raises one eyebrow.

"Rat screw?" Lyme says, coming back from the kitchen and sitting down. "Don't know that one."

So Sara teaches them the rules, and five minutes later reconsiders the merits of playing a game of reflexes against someone trained practically since birth, and who, even if she's probably trying to hold back, slaps _hard_. Sara gets her hand underneath once but she's not quite sure it's worth it.

But Rokia is actually playing along, and in between hands Sara tells stories about the mischief they're managing to get up to now that the train crews aren't confined to the loading docks in every other district. Getting someone to take them horseback riding in Ten, eating fresh sugar snap peas in 11, seeing the ocean in Four, and when she gets to the part where they got drunk on corn whiskey in Nine and went skinny dipping in the reservoir for the irrigation water, Rokia laughs out loud. Sara grins, sits back and just takes it in, her girl, as happy and relaxed as she's seen her in years. Lyme looks between them just for a second and smiles.

Sara has to go not long after, and maybe that's for the best--there's only so many stories, so many card games you can play in a day, and better to leave before it gets awkward. As they're going to get their coats Lyme hands Sara a bag with sandwiches, shakes her hand once more. "Thanks for having me," Sara says, and wouldn't her mother be proud of her for being polite.

That amused smile plays at the corners of Lyme's mouth again, and she says "You're welcome anytime." Sara gets the sense she actually means it.

They drive down to the station in silence again, but this time it's almost comfortable. Rokia follows Sara up the steps to the platform and they wait in the warehouse entrance, out of the wind. When the train whistle sounds, Rokia turns to face Sara. "Thanks for coming," she says.

"Anytime," Sara says. "Thanks for the invitation."

Rokia looks away. "Sorry I..." She shrugs, looks down.

"Hey, it's okay," Sara says, whatever Rokia's apologizing for it doesn't matter now. "I'm just glad I could come."

Rokia nods and looks up, just for a second catches Sara's eye. She nods.

 

The train pulls in a few minutes later and the engineer waves down to Sara.

"Bye Rokia," she says.

Rokia steps forward, puts her arms around Sara, and it's quick and through way too many layers of clothes but Sara hugs her back, lets Rokia go as soon as she pulls away. "Bye Sara," Rokia says, and it's just above a whisper but she's meeting Sara's eyes, lip between her teeth. Sara smiles back, one last look, takes a deep breath and turns away.

She's glad, for just this once, she doesn't know the crew, doesn't have to answer questions or put up with good-natured teasing that'd just feel wrong right now. She hops on, says hello to the guys in the engine room, and heads back to the lounge to eat her sandwiches and watch the mountains of District Two fade into the distance.


End file.
